Opinion: on his return from Dutch Design Week, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs argues that "something special is happening" in Eindhoven, a dowdy post-industrial sprawl that was recently named "the most inventive city in the world".

I've seen the future and it's a small, ugly town in the south of Holland.

I've been in Eindhoven for Dutch Design Week for the past few days and the energy, creativity and imagination I've come across has been a revelation. Not only designers but entrepreneurs, civic leaders, restauranteurs and musicians are buzzing with an excitement and optimism that is both rare and genuine. They feel something special is happening in their city.

The trip is part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour and even though this is the smallest and least attractive of the cities we've visited this year - other stops have included New York, Singapore and London - it's been by far the most interesting.

That accolade was based on research by the OECD, which found that the area leads the world in "patent intensity" - the number of patent applications per capita - a recognised way of measuring innovation. Eindhoven files 22.6 patents for every 10,000 people. San Diego, which is second on the list, files only 8.9.

It's an incredible turnaround for a city that, in the eighties, feared it was staring into the abyss when Philips, the electronics giant that was the dominant economic and social force in Eindhoven, as good as abandoned the city with the loss of 30,000 jobs (out of a total population of around 200,000). Things were so bad the city seriously considered changing its name - "eind" is Dutch for "end" - lest people take it too literally.

Designers need industry and R&D, and Eindhoven has these in abundance

Fearing the fate of Manchester, where the loss of heavy industry blighted the city centre for years, Eindhoven moved quickly to reinvent itself, giving abandoned Philips buildings to creative people who, true to the local spirit of hard work and cooperation, self organised and got on with building their own future.

Local authorities and developers around the world now commonly use such "creative seeding" to add buzz to an area to aid gentrification (and ultimately sell real estate) but in Eindhoven there appears to be a more equitable social construct to the way this is carried out.

Annemoon Geurts, the founder of Kazerne, a new creative industries hub in a former barracks in the city centre, told me that the city had offered her non-profit organisation an "erfpacht", or social lease, on the building, meaning it would benefit from the value they added during their tenure. And with a 40-year lease, something that would be unheard of in short-term, money-grubbing London, they have an incentive to make long-term improvements.

But designers on their own can't achieve much; if they aspire to more than just being another wannabe on the design-fair circuit they need an infrastructure of industry, R&D and other creative disciplines around them with whom they can make bigger ripples.

These complimentary sectors tend to open their doors to creative minds, rather than turning them away, ripping them off or viewing them with suspicion, as is the common experience other cities including London. Designers in the city talk of an openness towards new ideas and a willingness to experiment that permeates industry, academia and the city government itself.

Interdisciplinary collaboration - so often an empty cliche - appears to be an everyday reality in Eindhoven and they even have a special term for it. Proeftuin, which literally means "experimental garden" or "test bed", is a form of collaborative working between people of different disciplines that has been adopted by the city. Proeftuin was used to generate the city's (alas, unsuccessful) bid strategy for European City of Culture 2018 and would also have formed a key part of cultural activity in 2018, had it won.

In this case Eindhoven cannot claim these elements as its own: Roosegaarde is based near Rotterdam; the university is in Delft and the politicians are in Beijing. But Eindhoven can stake a convincing claim to the spirit, and that spirit offers a bright future.

Related movie:

Daan Roosegaarde unveiled an installation consisting of hundreds of wireless LED crystals that light up when placed on the floor at Dutch Design Week 2013.
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The patents are presumably primarily Philips ones of former material work objects they sold to be produced elsewhere while they stick to ownership on the rights: all completely in line with the creative industry becoming future colonialism.

Eindhoven is vibrant indeed. The people are happy to keep up a promise of wellbeing while the city falls apart in former material laborers becoming outcasts, voiced by the local dominant newspaper, and the new immaterials often with a diaspora of conflictuous for unrecognized origin.

Does Eindhoven know how exclusive their bubble is? Do they listen to the new Eindhovenaren? Anyway the article does show who whispered into this guy’s ear: city promotors and the popular.

Berry Eggen

Great article! BUT…

You say the university is in Delft, and in your column you link to the university of Wageningen. For everybody’s information: THE university is the EINDHOVEN University of Technology (TU/e). Proclaimed the best university in the Netherlands this year by Elsevier. The upcoming department of Industrial Design at TU/e is already recognized by the field’s experts as one of the world’s leading Academic Design Schools. Go and visit their ID’13 exhibition to learn about the future of Design & Technology. Taste an in-vitro meat ice-cream, dance in Experio, experience the Smart Textiles, learn how Rural Spark delivers energy in the poorest regions of India, or enlighten yourself by interacting with AMP, an intelligent social ‘lamp’ that was presented this year in Microsoft’s Design Expo in Seattle, USA. And don’t forget to do some shopping in the NANO supermarket (yes the Next Nature Lab is based at ID-TU/e). And the good news is that you can still see all of this and more this last weekend of DDW at the TU/e campus (very near the station)!

By the way, thanks for your awesome article on Eindhoven; the place to be, this week, and the rest of the year!

Hi Berry, in the last paragraph I’m referring to Daan Roosegaarde’s Smog project, which was done with the University of Delft. Please send us details of the ID’13 project though, I’m afraid I missed that while I was in Eindhoven.

Richard Bijlard

By the way: ASML is NOT a semiconductor company. It delivers machines to semiconductor companies all over the world and is market leader in this type of semiconductor production machines (lithography).

Anon

Great read. Eindhoven has changed a lot in the last decade and is really at the forefront of design, innovation and restructuring to fit new types of inhabitants. One small rectification: ASML is actually in Veldhoven.

generalpopulation

“The new immaterials often with a diaspora of conflictuous for unrecognized origin.” Sometimes, being overly verbose just damages your argument.

Ralph Zoontjens

Lol yeah I read it 3 times and still don’t get it. I wish I could understand what’s being communicated here! A master’s degree should be enough I thought!

Fra

No. Eindhoven sucks.

Mayk

Nice coherent argument.

Martin

Nice article, but that Eindhoven seriously considered changing its name is complete rubbish.